Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x09 - "Project Daedalus"

[Agony_Boothb]

Originally rated a 6 but the more i think about it a 4.5/10 (my lowest score for a discovery episode ever) seems more appropriate. I really did not like this one. Unlike others around here Airiam never really interested me as a background character. However, finally seeing her origin story made her more interesting to me in 50 minutes than in the last 25 episodes of Discovery combined. I would have loved to get to know the Airiam we saw tonight. And I think if we had got to know Airiam as the crew did and learn her story a bit earlier, then it would have made her death have much more impact. I'm really disappointed I was robbed of getting to know a character who had such a rich backstory and to have this crammed into 50 minutes. Also would it have killed them to take out some of those mines with phasers?

the .5 is for the performances of the cast, superb job by everyone.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Every time a fan bemoans a character being lost while leaving you wanting more, there is a production crew sleeping sound for a job well done.

An actor always wants a great death scene to perform, a writer one to pen, a director one to assemble, an editor one to splice together, and so on. Kudos to the gang on Discovery for doing their job right on this one.

Mark

 

[Tosk]

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[Agony_Boothb]

Every time a fan bemoans a character being lost while leaving you wanting more, there is a production crew sleeping sound for a job well done.

Except tacking on a backstory so I give a shit when the corrupted robbut person gets spaced is not a job well done, it is at best manipulative and lazy writing and at worst just plain shit. We've literally never seen any of the crew interact with Airiam other than to tell her to activate the spore drive or that she's good at downloading 100,000 year old torrents. I didn't even know she had a personality, let alone a husband once upon a time. It says something that I cared more about Nhan potentially getting killed than Airiam.

 

[Roald]

It says something that I cared more about Nhan potentially getting killed than Airiam.

What does it say, really asking here? Besides it being your personal opinion (which I value).

 

[Agony_Boothb]

What does it say, really asking here? Besides it being your personal opinion (which I value).

It says that Nhan became a more fleshed out character in 4 episodes than Airiam did in 20. At least to me.

 

[SG-17]

At least it seems like they are only adapting Control and not that weird Uraei thing.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I think for the good of everyone they should destroy Control

 

[Roald]

It says that Nhan became a more fleshed out character in 4 episodes than Airiam did in 20. At least to me.

Really? Ok.... Nhan was a background character to me... Airiam too, but they used this episode to ‘flesh’ (no pun intended) her out. Is that a bad thing? I cared about One in VOY’s ‘Drone’ despite him being in only one episode. That death -also a sacrifice- had a stronger emotional ring for me than Jadzia’s death, despite her being in 150 episodes.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I think for the good of everyone they should destroy Control

Kaos!

 

[LizStargaryen]

I didn't have an emotional impact on Tomlinson's death but I still say that development happened naturally. Just by the wedding scene we see that the two were deeply in love, and we even got to see interaction between them throughout the episode. The difference with Airiam is all the emotional stuff that happened to her was through memory, or in show terms, a clip show. We have (As @Lord Garth points out) 20+ episodes with this character and we saw none of those memories before. So basically we're comparing a character who was in one episode to a character who was in over 20 and had less development than that one episode character other than the cliched bait and switch kill episode. I just feel like the impact would have been greater if they treated Airiam with the same respect in life as they did in her death.

As for other one episode examples

Lal - Developed naturally to the point where you cared about her, but she was only in that one episode so they did a great job making it so you did care at the end

Amin Marretza - Same a Lal, and played by the great Harris Yulin. Also, it was key development for one of our main characters

Sim - He was basically Trip Tucker so we cared about him too.

Tuvix - Same as the others

These characters had time to develop naturally over the course of the episode. They weren't just given a clip show of images like Airiam was. They were the story, and that was the only time we saw them. With Airiam, she was a member of the crew and we saw her almost every week. That's the key difference.

I think you're selling the rest of the episode beyond the clip show short. Airiam's war between her own "programming" and the marauding AI from the future was quite compelling to me. Some are acting as if there was a 30 second clip show, and then the next thing we saw was Airiam attempting murder on the Section 31 base. But we kept seeing her wrestle with her virus.

As for Sim and Tuvix, just as both assisted with lead characters' development, Airiam is doing the same here. Her death is more about what it does for the protagonist and crew's development than a huge character moment.

In shows like The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror, in many cases, we're introduced early to a character who dies at the end of the episode. (Really looking forward to Jordan Peele's rebooted TZ this spring!) We've also seen this in past Trek comics. So this isn't that unusual as storytelling devices go.

Perhaps it's just lingering irritation over Disco's refusal to develop the bridge crew in character-driven episodes like past Treks did. If that's the case, as I've said repeatedly, I do understand. It is frustrating.

But it's the second season. A second season that for me is even better than the first, which for all the crit it gets was the best first season since TOS itself. If past Treks are any indication, it will only get better from here.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Really? Ok.... Nhan was a background character to me... Airiam too, but they used this episode to ‘flesh’ (no pun intended) her out. Is that a bad thing? I cared about One in VOY’s ‘Drone’ despite him being in only one episode. That death -also a sacrifice- had a stronger emotional ring for me than Jadzia’s death, despite her being in 150 episodes.

Drone is different, because we watch one basically grow up in the space of an episode. His story isn't reliant on some backstory we didn't know, or relationships with the crew we never knew about, we get to see him develop those relationships over the course of the episode. His death becomes meaningful we've seen Drone learn about the crew and bond with them in particular Seven.

With Airiam we basically get told a lot of stuff and her relationship with members of the crew is never previously established, so it comes a surprise when a character who has shown very little personality or emotion is suddenly shown as being best friends with everyone and having emotions. It doesn't ring true because we haven't seen any of these relationships develop.

 

[Mr Awe]

I think you're selling the rest of the episode beyond the clip show short. Airiam's war between her own "programming" and the marauding AI from the future was quite compelling to me.

I had a different reaction. How many times in SF have we seen a character possessed in some form and a loved one/friend attempts to convince them to focus on those relationships and fight the possessor? Lots of times. For me, that was fairly standard fare. Well covered ground. The difference in this story for me was that we never saw those relationships/bonds until this story.

Her death still had meaning, but it lost some of the punch. YMMV of course.

 

[Kor]

The line Spock says that he wasn’t the first mixed breed intrigues me. Did T’Pol and Trip attempt to have a kid again? ( I don’t think Trip died at the end).

If not I wonder who was the first successful Vulcan/human mixed breed?

He said there are others, plural.

Kor

 

[Tuskin38]

Hell, Saru only thought of it once it was discovered the Vulcan Admiral that had been threatening them had actually been dead for two weeks prior.

He thought something was wrong earlier than that, when the original transmission ended.

 

[eschaton]

I still cannot believe they ended the episode without disabling or blowing up Control. I will be sorely disappointed if this thread isn't followed up in the next episode.

 

[SJGardner]

I didn't think I'll be able to give out two tens in a row, but this episode surely deserved it. This week had some very emotional moments, and its tone felt somehow more mature, collected and professional than the first half of the season and I say this as a Discovery fan.

While I've wondered from time to time who and what exactly Airiam was, and the show finaly offered a long-awaited explanation about her nature. I'll have to admit, she never was the focus of my watching experience, but this episode served a great deal to humanize her to the point that I actually cried for her at the end as she chose her last happy memory from her own life to be the last thing she'll ever see. The scene with her archiving her memories was really touching, especially the memories of her just generally being friends with the crew, and Tilly's friendship with her was treated so naturally and matter-of-factly that I didn't have to suspend my doubts to be able to believe they've absolutely been good friends off screen.

Spock's argument with Burnham also hit way too close to home for me, especially as he has hit all her buttons about her chronic hero syndrome and ingrained self-blame. I keep seeing myself in Burnham more and more every week and this episode was true to this norm again, especially when she couldn't muster the will to open the airlock at the end and Nhan had to do it for her. Spock hismelf seemed a bit like an audience surrogate today, offering much of the same observations on both Burnham and Stamets/Culber that I've read all over the internet in recent weeks.

The matter with Section 31 is apparently coming closer and closer to its conclusion, and I'm starting to see the pathways to its official dissolution. I didn't have a problem with the base (presumably with Control's infrastructure aboard) not being blown up at the end, I thought Airiam's death was a much more fitting note to finish this episode with.

Random observations:

• They said Airiam downloaded all her important personal memories into Discovery's computer... could these in some way become a part or even the basis of Zora later?
• Burnham apparently was utilizing some classic Kirk-fu moves when she fought Airiam. Or at least her fighting style evoked that feeling in me.
  
• What did Tilly hack into as a teenager? Don't leave me hanging there, come on!

 

[eschaton]

Anyone else notice Michael was the "anti-Mary Sue" in this episode? Everything she did basically ended in failure. She couldn't fix her relationship with Spock. She couldn't save Airiam. She also couldn't obey a direct order to space Airiam - Nhan actually saved the day here. She also played almost no role navigating the minefield, discovering that the video had been doctored, or discovering Airiam was compromised. Really her only substantive plot-related role was getting into a badass fight with Airiam. Otherwise she was pretty irrelevant.

 

[eschaton]

One other thing I'm thinking about. While I originally compared the unearned emotional beats here to the sudden close relationship between Michael and Saru in An Obol For Charon, there is one important difference. In that episode, they didn't really have to make Michael and Saru have a heart to heart in that manner. However, here, the earlier episodes already established that Airiam was compromised, and this episode was supposed to be the resolution of that arc. Michelle Paradise basically had two choices. She could have treated Airiam as just a vaguely sketched out plot device for the crew to overcome, or she could treat her as a character. She chose the latter. Even though the emotional beats are unearned, it still led to a better outcome than not having them at all. Ultimately, it's more a flaw in showrunning than a flaw in writing per se.

 

[Greg Cox]

Heh... in saying that, she pretty much, at the same time, told the Disco crew that they suck. Pretty strange thing to say about a ship with the unique ability to travel anywhere in the universe instantaneously that was ostensibly the tip of the spear during the Klingon War. Enterprise couldn’t do that.

She was talking about Starfleet's ideals there, not its tech or the respective capacities of their ships.